Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted? – Counterpunch

MB Comment: Don’t forget to include in this dirty science category the CDC’s primary phony studies supposedly proving mercury in vaccines and the MMR vaccine don’t cause autism. A primary author of those studies (Poul Thorsen) is under indictment for fraud by the US Justice Department. Thorsen was the numbers guy who produced the Danish data for those bogus studies. Do you think his demise will cause those BS studies to be withdrawn? Of course not. The CDC has way too much invested in its vaccines/autism coverup to change course. It sure gives you a lot of confidence in the scientific process, which asserts that vaccines are safe, doesn’t it?

Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted?

Counterpunchby MARTHA ROSENBERG April 27-29, 2012

According to Science Times[1], the Tuesday science section in the New York Times, scientific retractions are on the rise because of a “dysfunctional scientific climate” that has created a “winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.”

But elsewhere, audacious, falsified research stands unretracted–including the work of authors who actually went to prison for fraud!

Richard Borison, MD, former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center and Medical College of Georgia, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud[2] but his 1996 US Seroquel® Study Group research is unretracted.[3] In fact, it is cited in 173 works and medical textbooks, misleading future medical professionals.[4]

Scott Reuben, MD, the “Bernie Madoff” of medicine who published research on clinical trials that never existed, was sentenced to six months in prison in 2010.[5] But his “research” on popular pain killers like Celebrex and Lyrica is unretracted.[6] If going to prison for research fraud is not enough reason for retraction, what is?

Wayne MacFadden, MD, resigned as US medical director for Seroquel in 2006, after sexual affairs with two coworker women researchers surfaced[7], but the related work is unretracted and was even part of Seroquel’s FDA approval package for bipolar disorder.[8]

More than 50 ghostwritten papers about hormone therapy (HT) written by Pfizer’s marketing firm, Designwrite, ran in medical journals, according to unsealed court documents on the University of California–San Francisco’s Drug Industry Document Archive.[9] Though the papers claimed no link between HT and breast cancer and false cardiac and cognitive benefits and were ghostwritten by marketing professionals not doctors, none has been retracted.

Pfizer/Parke-Davis placed 13 ghostwritten articles[10] in medical journals promoting Neurontin for offlabel uses, including a supplement to the Cleveland Clinic[11] but only Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols has retracted the specious articles.[12]

Nor is the phony science just a product of “Big Pharma.” In 2008, JAMA was forced to print a correction stating that authors of an article arguing for a higher recommended dietary allowance of protein were, in fact, industry operatives. [13] Sharon L. Miller was “formerly employed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,” and author Robert R. Wolfe, PhD, received money from the Egg Nutrition Center, the National Dairy Council, the National Pork Board, and the Beef Checkoff through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the clarification. Miller’s email address, in fact was smiller@beef.org, which should might have been the JAMA editors’ first tip-off.[14] The article has also not been retracted.

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There is concern Seroquel,like other atypical antipsychotic drugs, has the potential to cause metabolic disorders, particularly hyperglycemia (excess sugar) and diabetes. Atypical antipsychotics cause the body to metabolize fat instead of carbohydrates, leading to insulin resistance to the excess carbohydrates. At the same time they promote fat accumulation.I was a patient back in 1996-2000 who was a subject of Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa ‘viva’ Zyprexa’ off label sales promotion.I was given it as an ineffective costly treatment for PTSD It gave me diabetes as a side effect.
Eli Lilly made $65 BILLION on Zyprexa!
–Daniel Haszard-
FMI zyprexa-victims(dot)com